Storm (2009)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Storm |
| Original title | Storm |
| Country of production | Germany , Denmark , the Netherlands |
| original language | English , German , Bosnian , Serbian |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans-Christian Schmid |
| script |
Bernd Lange Hans-Christian Schmid |
| production |
Britta Knöller Hans-Christian Schmid |
| music | The Notwist |
| camera | Bogumił Godfrejów |
| cut | Hansjörg Weißbrich |
| occupation | |
| |
Sturm is a German-Danish-Dutch feature film from 2009. The world premiere of the drama took place on February 7, 2009 as part of the 59th Berlin International Film Festival .
action
Ex-General Goran Đurić, the top candidate of the Bosnian Serbs, is arrested on strong suspicion of war crimes in Bosnia and then spent three years in custody at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague . A few weeks before the trial, public prosecutor Hannah Maynard is entrusted with the thankless task of the prosecution after she has been unsuccessful in her application to head the prosecution against a previous colleague. Đurić is generally regarded as the main culprit, but the prosecution has hardly any concrete facts against him personally and must therefore be limited to smaller individual actions in which the suspect is said to have been involved.
Alen, a Bosniak, is reported to testify as a witness for the prosecution that he saw Đurić directing a war criminal operation against women in his village. Hannah Maynard leans fully on him; other direct witnesses are absent. Alen is convinced of Đurić's crime and wants to see him punished. However, it is dismantled by the defense. The bus that he claims to have seen in a schoolyard to transport women away cannot reach the courtyard during a test drive because the driveway is much too narrow. It turns out that the witness lied and was not present at the scene. The prosecution is back at the beginning of the evidence; Maynard makes serious accusations against her supposed witness. Alen then takes his own life.
Hannah Maynard suspects there is more to Alen's lie and investigates his life. On the day of his funeral, she visits the family and meets Alen's sister Mira, who is married to the German Jan Arendt, has two children and lives in Berlin . Mira has come to the village with her family to give up Alen's apartment. Hannah has the impression that Mira could be the key to arguing against Đurić. For the time being, Mira does not want to reveal whether and what she knows about the past. She never told her husband or children about it. While she is sorting Alen's estate in the village, a brutal attack by a stranger sends her the warning to stay out of everything. In front of his school, her son is given "presents" from Bosnia by an unknown person, and she too is given a warning to his mother.
Hannah finds bus tickets from Sarajevo to his home village and elsewhere in Alen's wallet. Alen visited both places shortly before he testified in The Hague. Mira doesn't want to know what Alen did in that other place. Hannah goes there alone and finds a large hotel complex. The general manager is unwilling to speak to her about the past (he bought the formerly state-owned hotel after the war), shows Hannah photos that someone had taken of her for surveillance purposes and asks her to "disappear" immediately. Before she can get into her car, a road worker throws a paving stone into the rear window of her car.
Mira then decides to tell Hannah what she knows. In Berlin, she speaks her statement on tape: She was torn from her bicycle by a soldier in the village and dragged into a bus in which other women were also being taken away. Đurić directed the action. In the spa hotel, the Bosnian women had to give the soldiers their will as in a brothel. Mira was the victim and eyewitness of the rapes. Women who refused or fell ill were shot in the basement. Here too, Goran Đurić was the commanding officer. One morning the soldiers were gone, Mira reports on her way back to freedom.
Hannah convinces Mira to testify before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. In a newspaper of the Republika Srpska it is reported that Mira is working as a "nest-polluter". A company car of the court, with which she is being taken to the beach for a break, is smeared when she returns to the car - another warning to Mira. Shortly before the testimony, however, the defense can prevent the rape in the spa hotel from being brought up by the court through a procedural agreement with the court. Hannah's friend Jonas Dahlberg, one of the UN's chief negotiators for ex-Yugoslavia, has a hand in this: the tribunal's activities are limited in time and financially; they want to finally close the urić case and end the tribunal. Hannah's boss has agreed to the deal; there is nothing she can do about it, but Jonas ends the friendship.
A few minutes before the trial, Hannah has to tell Mira that the judge won't ask her about the events at the spa hotel. Mira, who is waiting to be able to publicly talk about the terrible days and thus bring the guilty to his punishment, is completely flabbergasted.
In the courtroom there is a scandal when Hannah defies the court's dictate of silence and Mira nonetheless asks if she saw Đurić again after the bus ride to the hotel. Now it bursts out of Mira, who confronts the ex-general directly and brutally with his crimes. The disobedient witness is then taken out of the hall. According to the agreement, Đurić was given a three-year sentence served on remand and released immediately; nothing stands in the way of his participation in the election. However, the media coverage of Mira's testimony ensures that the Bosnian Criminal Court announces a trial against Đurić for the rape.
Reviews
"A convincing political thriller with impressive leading actresses who, like the staging that strives for authenticity, give urgency to political questions about the prosecution of war crimes."
" Sturm has its minor bumps, he needs more explanatory, sometimes didactic dialogues than one is used to from Schmid, but he never stumbles into the trap of free morals and indignant do-gooders."
“The film is always strong where it almost documentarily describes the complex processes in The Hague, the desolate hotel existence of all those involved, the laborious creation of minutes, the strict witness protection in the hotel and the formalized procedure. But the end, the small victory against the system that he gives Hannah Maynard, is as desirable as it is unrealistic. "
Awards
The film took part in the Berlinale 2009 , where it was represented in the competition for the Golden Bear , but received no award. The Golden Bear went to La teta asustada . At the festival, however , Sturm was awarded the prize of the human rights organization Amnesty International . A few months later, director Hans-Christian Schmid was awarded the Peace Prize for German Films .
At the 2010 German Film Prize , Sturm received the silver film prize as well as awards in the film music and editing categories.
Web links
- Storm in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Storm at filmportal.de
- Striker atrotten tomatoes(English)
- Official website for the film
- Expert opinion of the German Film and Media Assessment FBW - grade particularly valuable
Individual evidence
- ↑ Storm. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ^ "Storm": The only witness , tagesspiegel.de of February 8, 2009; Accessed July 15, 2012